POSTED BY FELLOW DINER
I was a diner at the table that the critic, Jeff Ruby, mentions and there are always two sides to every story.

Unfortunately, the review Jeff writes for Chicago Magazine has some notable omissions and the parts that are presented include a combination of gross exaggerations and outright fabrications.

To begin with, the critic was the rudest person I've ever shared a table with.

Elizabeth features communal dining and all diners are served at the same time. They ask that diners arrive promptly and their FAQ states that diners more than 30 minutes late may not be seated.

Of about two dozen diners that evening, all but the critic's party arrived approximately 15 minutes prior to the dining time and were seated. We were served a pre-dinner cocktail and spent some time being pleasant and getting to know the other diners at our table.

The critic's party, however, did not take part in this cordial conversation. Mostly because they arrived nearly 40 minutes late. Despite the fact that all the other diners who had promptly arrived had been seated and waiting for nearly an hour, they offered no apologies to the table or to the restaurant for making over 20 other diners and roughly half that number of restaurant staff start an evening much later than planned.

This antisocial behavior continued oddly throughout the evening -- with the critic refusing to directly converse with anyone at the table from early on and actually grew to be uncomfortable by the end of the meal.

From his review, I see now that he was trying to maintain an air of "insufferable quiet superiority". Ah, but if only he had actually been quiet. For he was anything but quiet -- you see, he rather unpolitely made snarky comments about the rest of the table to his female companion throughout the dinner as if we couldn't hear him, when in fact, we quite plainly could .

In fact, his rudeness was so pronounced that I quite thought he was "suffering in pompiness" rather than being "insufferable quiet superiority". I forgave their trespasses and wrote them off for conversation because I chose to enjoy the meal -- not attempt to make myself and the other diners miserable all evening. I assumed he was just being an asshole who had a bad day that culminated with him showing up late to a dinner that he wasn't capable of enjoying.

As for the "meat" of the article, nearly everything he writes about his dining companions is misrepresentations, exaggerations, and in some cases outright lies. I feel like he had an agenda that he had to be "superior" to everyone else and needed to create this fiction to support his agenda. When one of the other diners confronted him on twitter, the critic's response was this:

'Jeff Ruby @dropkickjeffy: @slambennett The smug pianist! You got it half right. I was late and I didn't try to converse.'

For what it's worth, I quite enjoyed the company of the other diners at the restaurant. In fact, I made new friends and got e-mail addresses and I've kept in touch with them. What I didn't enjoy was the company of the "professional critic" who showed up late... and who couldn't stop criticizing everyone all night long during the meal.

JAN 18, 2013 01:05 PM POSTED BY RUBY
Thanks for commenting. You're certainly entitled to your opinion, and I'm glad you chose to express it here. But I stand by the column, which is factually correct and an honest portrayal of the evening. Seems the only thing that you and I agree on is the fact that I was late.

I'm glad that you enjoyed your meal at Elizabeth from your end of the table. So did I, from mine.

Jeff

JAN 18, 2013 04:24 PM POSTED BY FELLOW DINER
Everything I said in my comment was true. Beside being extraordinarily late (actually past the last cut off time for seating), you refused attempts to engage in common pleasantries that are expected from polite people at a communal table. I will explain these courtesies to you since you obviously lack knowledge of them: be prompt and show up to dinner on time and well dressed, introduce yourself, make polite conversation or at the very least reply when spoken to, and at the end of the evening, thank your fellows for their company.

I don't believe you did any of these. You showed up late without an apology, half-disheveled like a frantic married couple who couldn't find a baby sitter, wasted a cumulative 24 hours of other diners and workers time before you picked up a fork without an apology, sat aloof and apart, and acted rude at the table.

And No... your account isn't "honest and factual"... you did not sit there "equally insufferable in [your] quiet superiority". You sat there pretending to be better than everyone else making rude comments like an immature high school kid to your wife loud enough for anyone with decent hearing to overhear.

There are things you would have learned too if you actually had talked to the other diners rather than merely made fun of them while eavesdropping from your ivory tower with the intent to misrepresent their conversations. You got small snippets of conversation and took them out of context and you also got details wrong even for the stuff that has a grain of truth.

I'll start with your obsession that the other diners were continually mispronouncing foie gras -- it was done once, in the middle of a joke about how people can't pronounce the word. For what it's worth, two of your fellow diners were Canadian (you know, a country that speaks French) and several of the other diners are conversationally fluent in the language as well. They've spent time studying French and time abroad visiting France. One had a best friend who has a doctorate in 14th century French literature and another has dined multiple times with the French consulate. The "smug pianist" even lived in France for a while. This was a group of people whom most could watch a French Film without subtitles.

No one at the table has 20 lbs of venison in their freezer. One said they had a couple tenderloins received from a brother who hunts deer in Mt. Hope Wisconsin on a 100 acre private reserve and who has closer to 200 lbs of venison if you actually want to keep count. In fact, he asked Iliana who her hunter was and how she sourced venison with a followup question if she was interested in sourcing more venison from Wisconsin when she was at the table.

The person you claim to have told "ill-informed tales of sous vide" has been using a chamber vacuum and a Polyscience immersion circulator at home for over four years. If you want to stop by and have them show you how to use these tools, they'd be more than happy to accomodate you as they do sous vide dinners at least monthly for friends.

I could continue on-and-on to dissect the list of each little insult you throw at your fellow diners and how it is factually incorrect because I actually spent time talking to them.

Again... everything you overheard you misheard, you exaggerated you got wrong, and some I'm still pretty sure you made up. There were boisterous groups at all three tables in the restaurant and you were too busy making rude little comments to your wife to actually clearly hear the details of any conversation. The fact that you were too aloof to engage and that you actually missed out on over an hour of pleasant talk before the meal gives you very little perspective on your fellow diners.

There also exists a reasonable assumption of privacy for conversations in an intimate setting. It's extremely rude to eavesdrop on people you're not talking to and to print what you only think you overheard. If you are going to violate this, at least you could do so in a manner that more truly represented what was actually said. Instead, your readers got incorrect quotes and quips taken out of context plus a fair amount of embellishment -- all focused through a lens of bitter cynicism.

Your article is juvenile in nature... taking a holier than thou attitude while reflecting the same immature name calling you displayed at our table: "large Canadian making love to his Camera", "smug" "socially stunted geeks", "blowhards", "windbags", "fanatics", "pretenders", "name dropping phony".

You're mistaken if you really think that anyone who has gone to high school doesn't realize you're not nearly as "superior" as you pretend to be with that attitude?

You claimed to be "One of Them" when talking about the other diners but YOU ARE NOT ONE OF US. Every foodie I've ever met, including the people at that table, are decent people who were nice to each other. None of us were phony or pretending to be something other than we were and the stories and passions for food that we shared in conversation over dinner were all personal experiences and opinions. What makes a person a "foodie" is not simply an appreciation or love of food but also an empathy and an ability to share that love with like minds.

No, You are not a "Foodie". You are a "Critic". You are a person who exists striving to find fault with things in life and criticize them -- sometimes rudely in mixed company. And simply knowing that people like you exist makes me lose a little hope for the human race.

I'm willing to bet that every other person at that restaurant talked to their other diners and made at least one new friend that night... with the exception of you and your wife.